Pay for click

Need experts opinion!

[TC_MAT]

I just wanted to get an expert help regarding pay for click and percentage of click that can be generated over or is it lucrative to venture to it if half the items we sell are ranging 10 dollar profit each.
We have an e-commerce and our site for the last three months were not fortunate to even get 3 hits overall. We realize that it was painstaking effort to be on the lookout where we stand on several search engines and if one or 2 would fall back then it takes weeks or months to recuperate and get it back as top 10. There are a few competitors having been observed that remains 3 top in PFC for months now. But I guess this forum might enlighten us better. Would you stand better being in top 10 for regular search engines or visitors tends more to favor this PFC top 3. Is it worth the money and is there a method to seek a site that gets a report status as how many viewers visits or clicks a word in particular.
thanks!

[JamesR]

Try it out for a period of time. Calculate how much your visitors are worth. Example, if you made 1 sale at $100 and it took 100 people to get that sale, each visitor is worth $1. If it was only $10 in profit, your visitors are worth .10. You then can keep your click cost under the cost of each visitor and refine your numbers over time. That way, it can be very profitable, you will always theoretically make money on every click you pay for.

[Michael Weir]

....and if you want to be in the top 10 of the SERP, keep in mind that being in the 1st-5th hightest competition slot on overture.com will rank you identically the same way on a lot of the "normal" search engines - as featured or partner sites.

(edited by: Michael_Weir at 11:09 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2002)

[Marcia]

>Would you stand better being in top 10 for regular search engines or visitors tends more to favor this PFC top 3.

One difference is that with PPC if the budget runs out the clicks stop; with regular listings it's not dependent on continued payment.

Which type of listing gets more clicks is a good point, can't remember if that was ever clearly answered.

>Is it worth the money and is there a method to seek a site that gets a report status as how many viewers visits or clicks a word in particular.
thanks!

With Overture and Google there are reports available, and it's worth doing just for those. It can be invaluable in choosing keywords to do re-optimization on a site. Google's is safer financially, especially their PPC.

[TC_MAT]

JamesR,Michael Weir,Marcia thanks....
Can you tell us then which is highly targeted or has a more favorable results base on your knowledge, Overture or Google.

[Michael Weir]

I'd have to say overture on this one. While Google is a terrific S.E, the fact is, google is kind of a sleeper S.E if you will. The average user looking to do a search is going to first go to, probably, Yahoo.com - since they've done all their marketing in the past - everybody and their brother knows about yahoo.

The strengths of listing with overture - it provides top listings to netscape, AV, AOL, direct hit, hotbot, lycos, iwon, and NBCi. I believe it powers all search results for Ask Jeeves.

Google provides some listings for yahoo and netscape.

[JamesR]

I'd have to go the other way and suggest Google (although both can work for you). For me, Google gives sometimes ten times the amount of traffic that Yahoo does. Just be specific on your keywords, write good descriptions, and lead your visitors to relevant content (matching the keyword) and you will get the kind of targeted traffic you are looking for.

[Michael Weir]

True. And google sometimes powers yahoo searches (web page matches) and that is good for site exposure.

[Michael Weir]

I just did a little bit-o-research and checked the referral stats for a couple of client's sites - NOTE: Both sites are in the top five spots for most targeted keyword phrases on overture.com.

site A) yahoo referrals 42.3%, google referrals 14.2%, overture referrals 2.1%

Site A google PR = 4

siteB) google referrals 26.3%, yahoo referrals 25.2%, overture referrals, 3%.

Site B google PR = 6

Interesting to note that site B get's most of it's referrals from google and has a PR of 6 whereas site A, with a PR of only 4, gets significantly less traffic from google. So it would appear that google has the upper hand. I'm definately starting to respect google.com more. ;)

[alexg0182]

Michael Is so right on this one. Google is great for looking up info and for all things, Its very well rounded. But most people will go to yahoo first